It Doesn't Hurt You to Reuse A Fork
By Audra Nemir
Contributing Writer

My roommate thinks I'm crazy. I have dozens of plastic eating utensils under my bed. I have paper bowls, slightly dusty from cereal that I got at snack last month, but still good enough for one more use. I have a waxed paper cup from the Pitzer dining hall that is bent out of shape after being used continuously since last Friday. I must be the only person here who smuggles red cups into the dining hall.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, I have a problem, and the cause is simple. The throw-it-away culture at this school drives me nuts. I can't stand how people treat paper and plastic dining materials like they disappear once they go on the conveyor belt at Frank or the metal shelves at the greenhouse. I feel ill when I look around the dining hall at breakfast and see everyone's smoothie in a take-out cup, complete with a plastic lid and straw. If you're not leaving, why is a styrofoam cup any better than a reusable red one? I realize they're about 10 feet closer to the smoothie bar, but I'm not very sympathetic.

Who am I to complain? I feel justified accusing the environmentally unconscious masses because of my own freakish behavior. I carry a set of plastic camping silverware in my backpack so that when I eat at the greenhouse I don't have to use plastic silverware. When I forget my reusables and have to use plastic, I take the utensils back to my room to wash them and use them again (or store them under the bed for a few months) because I can't stand the thought of perfectly good plastic forks degrading in some landfill because I used them once. I take a hard plastic plate to the pizza bar because there's no reason to use and discard a paper one. I always put my smoothie in a red cup, and, when I need that smoothie to go, I prop the cup up in my backpack, take it out, and return it later. (Okay, so I ruined a bag this way, but if I had washed it before spring break, everything would have been fine).

I try to bring my own cup in for snack, and if I have to take a disposable cup because I came into the dining hall unprepared, I take it back to my room and rinse it out, and use it until it seems to have earned retirement (hence the week-old waxed paper cup from Pitzer).

So what is my point? I am making a call to action. I am not asking anyone to assume my obsessive behavior. All I ask is for everyone to do one thing: THINK. Realize that while there may not be much of a difference between reusable and disposable items in the way they get the food and drink to you, there is a big difference in where they go when you finish. When you're in the greenhouse and you're eating a pizza, don't pick up all three pieces of plastic-ware just out of habit. When you're going to sit down and enjoy your soda or smoothie, drink it from one of those nice red cups the dining hall provides. Don't triple stack your hot beverage in Styrofoam so that your hand stays icy cool. Step up your dining behavior just one notch to make the world that much less affected. And when you see me zipping a red cup into my backpack, don't worry. I'm planning on bringing it back.